The Idea Fountain

I have been refreshed! Today the amazing group of people I work with met to plan programs for kids for the summer. I had challenged everyone to come prepared with two program ideas that they were willing to do (we are doing the CLSP water theme). It was a delightful give and take and everyone had more ideas than we could find days to slot the programs in. Pirates; beach parties; duck attacks; undersea adventures; ocean murals on windows; shark adoptions; Dahlov Ipcar puppet show; the Hedgehog Librarian's Incredibly-Patient-Mother's idea to make window clings (worth the price of admission my friends!); fun with rain gutters; a swim party at one of our pools and so much more.

There was incredible energy and generosity as we worked to meet the expressed needs of our customers - more evening programs; a new toddler storytime at one of our neighborhood branches; programming for our preschoolers as well as our school-agers. We chewed over ways to track participation (perhaps a cool new database - slaver, slaver) or just counting what's left of a given doo-dad or gee-gaw (is that pronounced jee-jaw or Gee-Gaw?) to know what we've distributed.

Throughout that meeting I saw the amazing fountain of ideas and thought that my colleagues contributed to excite kids to use the library and read throughout the summer. I know that kids will catch our excitement and we will lead even more kids to the love of reading and books. And now...summer-hater that I am, I can hardly wait for summer!